Quick Update re v0.9
After the brief break from work on SLM:H&S I got back to it earlier in the week. At the moment 0.9 is testing well in my local environment and I'll start testing on the dev branch in Steam on Monday to make sure there's nothing untoward happening there.
The new version will come with changes that will invalidate your saved game, which I understand is a pain. This is something I had hoped to avoid but when solving some of the issues in 0.8 I found myself having to change the way I was doing things and ultimately this is reality in the beta version.
Save compatibility will be stable from Version 1 onwards saving any unforeseeable catastrophes and I'll be doing my best to retain the compatibility between 0.9 and 1.0 too.
That said, here's some things you can look forward to in V0.9.
League Statistics & Player Poaching
You will not be able to view the top 20 players for goals, assists and average ratings and more excitingly, if there's interest on the side of the player, poach these players for your team. You will be presented with 4 options of how to win a player over when interest is mutual and your choices & actions in these scenarios will decide whether you are able to nick the leagues top scorer or not. Once successful, the player will seek release from their club and join you 1 week later.
Sponsorship
You will now be ale to choose a player to take with you to sponsorship meetings. The choice you make can increase the chance of success and increase the total money the sponsors are willing to part with - so choose wisely. There's also a fruit-machine mechanic at the end of negotiations which will give you a chance to increase the total once more; allowing you to have a bit more control of sponsorship success and drive facility improvements in the club itself.
Personalities
Traits have been explicit up to now, but in the future rather than seeing a 1-10 rating for a players attitude, Loyalty, Ambition and so on, you will instead see an "at a glance" descriptor of their personality.
Squad View
Order your team by position, appearances, goals, assists or average rating to assess their performance at a glance and get an quick idea of who needs game time and who might be surplus to requirements.
Training
You can control how your players train now, selecting from a light 90 minute session, to a heavy 3 hour session, you will choose between 2 and 4 drills from the selection available to put the lads through their paces. This allows you to focus on specific attributes rather than the previous "hope they improve correctly" mechanic I had in place.
